Discuss The Archers #107: Beware of the Dragon! Peggy's in her den awaiting bids - who gets the hoard and who gets flamed?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @MrsGrindah for inspiration for the title of this thread. I was hoping to find a way to combine it with @C8H10N4O2's inspired suggestion of '"The Assumption of the Ambridge Angel' and @chemenger's comment 'I hope she gets kicked in the head by a horse and wakes up an atheist', but it all got a bit too lengthy.

Odds on Joe shuffling off this mortal coil before this thread ends? We've been marking/anticipating his passing for a while now.

I think if someone I knew approached me in that way I wouldn't necessarily lend them the money but I would try and get them to sit down and talk it through. As PP have suggested on this thread what she is doing is probably not the best way to tackle the problem.

It is odd. The SWs gave everyone pretty much the same reactions to HWMNBN - prompting great anticipation amongst listeners regarding his likely suicide. But instead his story fizzled out in a vaguely positive manner not involving Ambridge.

And yes, it’s inconceivable that amongst all the people Emma has spoken to not one, (apart from her father) having known her for decades, has sat her down and tried to find out what’s happened. I hope this is purely plot based and not a reflection of the SWs attitudes.

Also I don’t see how she can ever have any sort of friendly relationship with the people who have rebuffed her. So, realistically, from now on Emma should surely feel some enmity towards Jim, Ruth, Fallon, Peggy. And Kate of course. (And I’m sorry but I want Kate to die painfully. I’ll certainly never forgive her.)

Yes, everyone’s reactions are very odd indeed. Particularly Peggy’s. She has bailed people out before, and the “neither a borrower or a lender be” like was incredibly out of character. And Kate was shocking.

And Kate was shocking

Well we are schooled to expect Kate to be self absorbed and thoughtless but I was honestly expecting Peggy to issue a sharp reminder of Kate's own begging habits once Emma had left. Instead of which she really let her get away with very nasty. behaviour.

I think the reason my thoughts moved to a suicide story was because they seem to be setting everyone up to reflect on how nasty they were - lots of hand wringing, StS providing counselling all round and then they just carry on as if nothing happened.

That would make for a cheery few weeks

then again I thought Ruth would be sympathetic and was completely taken aback by her response.
They were sympathetic to Kenton and look where that got them. Once bitten, twice shy.

MeandEd are doing it all wrong. They are asking all sorts of unsuitable people to give them money, at short notice, with no proper plan in place (how much, repayment schedule, interest rates, security, etc).
After rebuffs from Jim & Ruth, Emma should have been cleverer with Peggy and asked for advice (because Peggy loves to play at being the Sage of Omaha Ambridge). Quite often if you try to corner benefactors into giving succour then they don't like it; if you let them think that they are freely giving from their own munificence then they are much more likely to be forthcoming.

Good point R4 re how to approach. I think Emma isn't thinking straight, she's desperate and panicky.

Emma lost a lot of sympathy when she had a go at Fallon for having the temerity to be married to someone with a secure job which he hadn't thrown away through utter stupidity and criminal conduct.

Has she actually asked whether there is anything going at the chicken factory for Ed?

Oh good Lord poor Emmur. My heart can't take much more of her desperately trying again and again to find her way (albeit stupidly) out of a mess not of her making, only to get smacked down and humiliated by long-time neighbours. How will she be able to look these utter shits people in the eye? It's heartbreaking how mean and lacking in kindness people have been to her.

It is however bloody annoying that she is not taking the right steps. She doesn't understand how mortgages work - and yet why should she, her family background is not one that is familiar with the ways of "wealth management".

Whoever said she should talk to Lilian was correct. Lilian understands being in tight corners, understands money and mortgages. Understands living husbands who so illegal and stupid things.

We knew she and Ed have blighted stars and will have home ownership denied to them, but oh I wish it wasn't so painful to listen to.

I wonder if we’ll have any episode of conversation between all the rebuffers. Annoyingly they’re not natural allies - but I don’t see how word won’t get around that Emma has been asking people for large sums of money.

Just awful how each encounter was worse than the previous one. How can she go on working with Fallon now? And Peggy’s contempt ... Unbearable.

Million BOOPS for the portrayal of Emma’s distress. And the vile attitude of the Ambridge community.

But it was fun to hear from Tracey again. She must be about the only person in Ambridge Emma hasn't asked for money!

Lillian is also kind. Where is she?

out of a mess not of her making that's not the case bucking she did encourage Ed to work for Tim when he began and when he wanted to finish. But he's so weak, all his lies have backfired. Bizzarre that Tracey said he was a Horrobin! I was surprised that Emm didn't break down with her, at least she was properly sympathetic.

Lillian is also kind.

I love her - but she wasn’t kind to HWMNBN. And that again was a question of money/accomodation, which she was uniquely well placed to help with.

They were sympathetic to Kenton and look where that got them

That isn't Emma's fault. The Dopeys are happy to have Emma skivvying for them when it suits and to have the Grundy men on tap when they need work without providing regular employment.

Emma deserved at least a "what's the problem" from them because she has never been a scrounger asking for money and its completely out of character for her.

I think Ruth and Peggy were shitty, Jim was just taken aback.

Lilian is the person she should ask but she doesn't have a pre-existing relationship with Lilian. Those she has asked so far are all people to whom she has provided good services as an honest, reliable hard worker in the past, or in Jim's case someone she has worked with directly on community stuff.

• Sorry, meant to say it would naturally follow that Justin would tell Lilian about the conversation with Emma. But it doesn’t look as if they’re planning rescue from that source.

Brian is being sympathetic to Ed ,she hasn't asked him, maybe help will come from him.

The actress portraying Emma is brilliant-that quaver in her voice-heartbreaking.

Kate was appalling. I would love to shove a yurt up her backside-wide end first. Hopefully, something horrible is waiting for her.

Bizzarre that Tracey said he was a Horrobin No, she said Emma was a Horrobin, which she is, through her mother.

Good point C8H1. The fact that everyone has been so horrid to her sets the scene for some kind of collective guilt when something terrible happens. Emma sounds increasingly desperate with each passing episode and it seems as if events are leading up to an awful crescendo.

Not sure if I missed it but did Neil hear back from the bank?

My mum told me recently that when my parents were trying to buy a house in the early 1980s they were a few hundred pounds short and had a few days to find it due to a last minute mishap. A woman from my mum's church, who she wasn't particularly friendly with, turned up unannounced with the money in an envelope. Mum had no idea how this woman even knew about her predicament. It's been the basis for her "God moves in mysterious ways" mantra ever since!

It's reminding me of 'An Inspector Calls', when everyone rebuffs the desperate, pregnant girl in the cruellest possible way, and she kills herself.

I'd have expected that from SOC but it seems odd and clunky now. Everyone has behaved very shabbily, it's beyond weird that nobody has asked what's the matter of the obviously-distressed Emma, and Peggy's smugness was particularly hard to take. And I'm no fan of Emma.

Something occurred to me when it became clear that Ed, as usual, really didn't have his heart in looking for a paid job with an employer who would require him to go in to work at a set time to do that job and not make allowance for him if he wanted to rush home in the middle of the morning because Emma had said she needed him for something.

Ed does not actually want to move into the new house. Or at least, he doesn't really care if he doesn't, though he got quite excited by the idea for a bit.

It was not his idea and is not his dream; he went along with it because Emma drove him. He is happy living from hand to mouth, really, and taking no particular thought to the morrow: he is not worried about "what will we do when we can't be at Grange Farm any more". The responsibility for where they are to live has never been something he has owned; it's always been Emma's business. Similarly, he doesn't mind sharing the house in the way that she minds it, because he isn't the one constantly having to make allowances and compromises with the other person who is running it.

Absolutely right asking, he's never been as bothered about the move as Emma. She's inherited her mother's drive to lift herself up and he's inherited his father's happiness with pootling along (because the women make all the effort). If they don't get the house I can't see them surviving as a couple.

Well, yes - Ed’s a Grundy; Grange Farm is his spiritual as well as childhood home. He’s been as supportive as he can be of Emma’s dream, even though she’s had to push him at every step. But every Grundy (‘cept Will) would want to stay at Grange Farm forever.

(And I don’t see why they can’t. Oliver doesn’t need it. Neither do his daughters. I don’t want Ed and Emma to lose their deposit - that would be heartbreaking - but I would rejoice if the SWs could find a way to put them in permanent possession of Grange Farm.)

My late grandmother was a bit of an Archers psychic (she could always predict a Matt Bellamy return) and she was convinced that Oliver would leave Grange Farm to Ed.

So long term the plot could be, Ed and Emma lose the house, few more years of misery, Oliver slips down the stairs of an Italian piazza, Ed inherits Grange Farm and everyone is happy.

Except Will.